Rudy Husband, a Pan Am spokesman, said the company learned a few months ago that the MBTA might not honor the deal, even though it had already begun running additional trains to Wachusett, the last stop in Fitchburg.

Earlier this year, they extended the service to Wachusett, and that was allowed to happen based on the assumption that the 2014 agreement was going to be honored, he said.

Spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the MBTA does not believe the dispute will threaten Fitchburg Line service. In an e-mail, he wrote that the MBTA looks forward to continuing its constructive dialogue with Pan Am and Norfolk Southern toward resolving this matter.

Keolis, the company that operates the commuter rail system for the MBTA, declined to comment.

In a November letter, John Englander, general counsel for the MBTA and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, took issue with several of PanAms claims, including the validity of the 2014 agreement. The MBTAs extending of service to Wachusett does not necessarily mean it has to abide by that agreement, he said.

In Finks December letter, he asked the MBTA to engage in good faith discussions with Pan Am. If a resolution isnt reached in the next 30 days, the companies could seek arbitration or go to court, Fink said.

The Fitchburg Line, which runs through Waltham and Concord, was extended to Wachusett in November even as Keolis struggled to provide enough coaches for all its trains.

The extension uses about 5 miles of Pan Am track.

The dispute follows a similar clash between the MBTA and Amtrak.

In August, Amtrak threatened to eliminate rail service from Boston to New York and Washington, D.C., over a legal dispute with the MBTA, which sued Amtrak after it requested $30 million for track maintenance.

Both sides have since said in court filings that they are close to a settlement.

In the Pan Am disagreement, the MBTA is accused of violating an existing deal, which stems in part from a 2008 law that mandated railroads have positive train control installed on their passenger trains by 2018, a three-year extension from the laws initial deadline.

Under that law, the MBTA must install anti-collision technology on commuter rail tracks by 2019, Husband said. If it doesnt, it may no longer be able to use PanAms tracks legally, he said.

We want to make sure rail operations  both passenger and freight  are as safe as possible and in compliance with federal law, Husband said.

[ Editor Note: PanAm also operates other trackage extending northerly from Bostons North Station to other communities. How this dispute may impact those lines travelled by the MBTA commuter rail is yet to be determined. ]

The project, though, has been heavily criticized as it involved the destruction of part of the original building. Built between 1914 and 1928 on designs by architects Friedrich Eugen Scholer and Paul Bonatz, it was one of Germanys first modernist structures. Protests against the project reached a peak in 2010 when roughly 30,000 people demonstrated in front of the building site against its rising costs and environmental impact.

This year police in Cologne with assistance from other nearby police departments and national law enforcement agencies increased by 10 times the police presence in the area in order to intercept and interrupt acts of violence immediately. Another factor for the heavy police presence was the December 2016 terror attack on a Christmas market in Berlin carried out by a refugee from Tunisia via Italy, who hijacked a large truck and drove it into the Christmas market, thus killing 12 people including the truck driver and injuring approximately 20 bystanders. The Tunisian terrorist claimed to acting on behalf of ISIS. He was shot and killed four days later in a suburb of Milan, Italy by local Italian police, when he engaged the police in a gun fight near a suburban train station, after they asked him to provide identification.

Law enforcement observers, many German politicians and the general public heavily criticized law enforcement and anti-terror intelligence services in Germany for completely botching the investigation of the terrorist both before and after his Christmas market attack in Berlin. With the massive criminal incidents of the last NYE party in Cologne a year ago, and the truck terror attack in Berlin a few weeks ago, local police in Cologne were prepared and on high alert for signs of trouble. And the police discovered signs of pending trouble this year  hundreds of young men of Middle Eastern and North African background were communicating by various social media platforms on the internet to converge by trains on Colognes central train station and the plaza in front of the cathedral. Police, however, preempted the mobs of men as they came off of various trains and other public transit. Dozens were arrested by police, many others were ordered to vacate the area. A potential disaster on this years NYE was avoided.

The actions of the police and other law enforcement agencies were widely praised in the news media, by private citizens and many politicians and several political parties. The glaring exception was the leader of the far-left Green Party in Germany, who accused police without any proof or evidence that police simply targeted any young men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern or North African origin at the NYE event in Cologne, in other words racial profiling. Backlash against her statements from the public and many police, family members of police and numerous political leader was swift and severe. One day later she walked back her accusations.

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